Norway opens a crimes-against-humanity investigation into Telenor's Myanmar data handovers

Telenor said local law in Myanmar required it to store customer data for several years, and that following that law was how it protected its employees ^[14]. Those stored records are the subject of the complicity case. Norwegian officials said the basis of the charge is that Telenor "repeatedly handed over historical traffic data about customers to the military regime during this period, at the same time as the regime was responsible for extensive abuses against parts of the civilian population" ^[6].

The company published the volume itself. Before the sale, Telenor said it had complied with at least 200 military requests for customer information over the previous year, according to Myanmar Now ^[12]. Spread over 365 days, that is one handover roughly every other day ^[21]. The investigated period, from the coup to the completed sale, runs 417 days ^[20].

Telenor is arguing duress. Spokesperson David Fidjeland said employees "risked imprisonment, torture or the death penalty if the military authorities' orders were not complied with" ^[7]. "This was a very demanding situation in which we found that we had no real choice and that we could not put our employees' lives at risk," Fidjeland said ^[8]. He said the company has already handed documents and other information to law enforcement agencies ^[9]. Telenor has also said it initially rebuffed military efforts to install surveillance equipment on its systems ^[13].

The second investigation looks at how Telenor got out. The Police Security Service says the sale of the Myanmar subsidiary included sanctioned surveillance equipment and was done without permission from Norway's Ministry of Foreign Affairs ^[2]. The buyer was the Lebanese company M1 Group, which almost immediately sold 80% of the business to Shwe Byain Phyu, a company run by allies of the military government ^[10]. According to The Record, human rights experts said the sale handed over the historical call data of more than 18 million people ^[11].

The criminal files arrive after the civil ones. Myanmar civil society groups sued Telenor last year, claiming its data was used to locate, detain and torture people, and at least one person was executed after being arrested allegedly because of information obtained through Telenor data ^[16][17]. A Swedish nonprofit filed a class action in April on behalf of 1,200 people who allegedly had their data shared with the junta ^[18]. Yadanar Maung of Justice For Myanmar warned in 2022 that Telenor's systems and data would be used to "track down, arrest, torture and murder civil society activists and journalists" ^[19].

The complicity case is at the investigation stage, and the announcement as reported names Telenor as the subject and does not name individual suspects ^[23]. Telenor has operated in Myanmar since 2014 ^[15].